End of Warranty Wind Farm O&M Options Report 2012: Increase Reliability and Productivity By Implementing New Retrofitting and Repowering Strategies

End of Warranty Wind Farm O&M Options Report 2012: Increase Reliability and Productivity By Implementing New Retrofitting and Repowering Strategies

Published: February 20, 2012

Content info: 252 Pages; 150 Figures & Graphs

This publication has been discontinued on August 2, 2017.

Description

Improve your levelised cost of energy by increasing reliability and
productivity, with new retrofitting and repowering strategies.

Introduction

At the time of publication the future of new wind installations in North
America is unclear. Long term Production Tax Credit (PTC) uncertainly and
government lobbying in the run-up to elections mean that renewable energy as a
whole, not only wind energy, is viewed as a political tool as much as part of
a long term sustainable power generation solution.

In addition to this, grid access is now at a premium for wind energy
developers; Still the intermittent nature of wind energy entering the system
causes transmission and distribution headaches.

This means that if existing wind farm owners wish to maximise generation
potential they must look to refine their existing operation to ensure maximum
power is generated and sold. Operations and maintenance (O&M) strategies need
to reflect this shift and O&M managers need the latest information on why, how
and when to repower once their fleet comes out of warranty.

Purchase this exclusive report and you'll benefit from the following analysis:

LCOE: Insight into the practical techniques being used to improve
LCOE

Costs and Benefits: Gain in-depth information on the costs and
benefits of retrofitting and repowering wind farms

Accurate Market Assessment: Find out where the market is and the
real possibilities for purchasing and repowering existing wind sites to take
advantage of government incentives and improved modern technology

How to mitigate the risk: Learn what the try risks are for
retrofitting and repowering, understand how to avoid them and make the most
out of any constraints

Analysis of the excellent payback that decommissioning can now
provide to a repowered wind site

Exclusive Industry Case Studies: Get first hand insight of sites
that have implemented both retrofit and repowering solutions for increased
reliability and productivity

Drill down into the financial benefits possible from timely retrofit and
repowering of wind sites

Identify the key times to consider upgrades to your wind farm

Uncover the paybacks experienced by recent retrofit and repowering
projects

Learn from the experiences of developers undertaking these projects

Understand how to mitigate the risk of your investment

Gain information on Government incentives and permitting process in
each market

In-depth reliability analysis

Find out which components are contributing the greatest number of
downtimes

Benchmark your productivity against that of other onshore wind farms

Get an insight into the reality that age of turbine contributes to
down time and lack of productivity

Learn how companies are improving productivity from their existing
assets

Find out how continued reliance of unscheduled maintenance keeps
O&M costs prohibitively expensive

The retrofit and repowering market

Discover what the opportunities are now available for wind farms
with decreasing productivity

Understand what technology you can utilise to revolutionise your
wind production

Uncover how repowering a wind site can utilise existing
infrastructure and add to huge ROI

Chapter Overviews and Research Highlights

Market Assessment

A thorough assessment of trends and growth prospects for wind repowering and
retrofitting worldwide. It outlines where and when projects have already been
completed, which developer or manufacturer was chosen to carry out the work,
and which projects are currently being undertaken and which are on the
planning stage.

Research Highlights

$40billion worth of turbines will come out of their warranty period in 2012

Developers are replacing multiple numbers of turbines with fewer but
larger and more powerful units, and increasing capacity by on average between
three and five times

China will be the largest repowering and retrofitting market in 2020, with
44.7 GW, followed by the USA with 37 GW

Reliability

An in-depth analysis all of the components of a wind turbine, what failures
could occur post-warranty, how much they could cost to repair and how lengthy
the downtime and subsequent loss of productivity would be. The section also
offers in-sight into the impact of turbine size and age on reliability and
productivity.

Research Highlight

Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) Database, 2011

Retrofitting

An assessment of the rewards and risks of retrofitting weighing increased
availability and productivity against costs. This section also outlines the
types of retrofits available, lead times and how the finances of retrofitting
compare to routine O&M component replacement.

Research Highlight

Repowering

Analysis of repowering options with a focus on costs, rate of return and
growth potential. The report considers all repowering options, ranging from
replacing a single turbine with a modern version to a complete overhaul of all
turbines in a wind farm.

The report provides real wind farm repowering case studies from Germany and
Spain and considers the technological benefits of new turbines.

Decommissioning

Crucial information on the cost of decommissioning wind farms and how to
recover a sizeable proportion of this expenditure through recycling components
and the second-hand sale turbines. Includes an in-depth case study from the
decommissioning of the Stony Creek wind farm in the USA.

Research Highlight

Methodology

We surveyed 168 Operators/developers - collating a detailed look at the
reliability of components, the cost of repowering/retrofitting and the
benefits that have been achieved from this.

Second survey we surveyed 150 component manufacturers and service
providers - again ascertaining the true reliability of components, as well as
establishing what bonuses to productivity for a wind site could be gained for
retrofitting and repowering.

We undertook in-depth interviews with operators, independent service
providers, OEMs and reliability centers to bring together multiple opinions on
improving wind LCOE.